If you’re a frequent RPS reader (or an infrequent RPS reader with uncannily good timing), the image on the front page of ubiquitous, recently-banned-in-the-UK-under-extremely-dubious-circumstances torrenting site The Pirate Bay might strike you as a bit familiar. If not, you may have still been able to guess that it heralds from Sos Sosowski’s McPixel because, well, the first four words on the page will tell you all of that. This, however, is the first time a game has ever been featured as part of Pirate Bay’s “Promo Bay” program – wherein, a creator gets to leverage the site’s incredible reach for exposure. But how’d this come about? And what does it say about the ever-evolving role of piracy in the gaming industry? Plus, given that many file swaps on Pirate Bay are technically illegal, does anyone really deserve a pat on the back in this situation? I spoke with both McPixel’s Sos and an organizer from The Pirate Bay to find out more.

Don’t get mad. Don’t lash out. Just think for a second. Count to ten. Punch a pillow. Do whatever you’ve got to do. It definitely worked for Sos Sosowski.

People were stealing his hard work – his first commercial release ever – right in front of his eyes, and he caught them red-handed. He found a link on The Pirate Bay, and sure enough, it was madcap mini-adventure explosion McPixel in its entirety. But instead of doing his damndest to bust everyone involved, he turned the other cheek. Like one of seemingly nonsensical cause-and-effect relationships in his game, potentially grievous harm to his bottom line prompted him to hand out free stuff.

“I was actually visiting Pirate Bay from time-to-time looking for a McPixel torrent,” Sosowski explained to RPS. “If people pirate games, it means they want to play it regardless of anything. Pirate Bay is one of the most visited sites in the Internet, and just having a torrent there is promotion for the game. I left a comment there, because I wanted people to know that I make games for a living, and that they are directly supporting me with each purchase.”

“I also realised that some people are unable to do that, since PayPal is not accessible in their country, or they don’t have a credit card, or just cannot afford it, because it’s worth their daily or weekly wage. So I went ahead and left few gift codes. It was not much, but I wanted to show that I understand. Some people contacted me asking for different means of supporting me too. I was really happy to hear that people actually care, and i think it shows that piracy is not bad at all. It’s just mis-perceived.”

And then the all-seeing, Sauron-but-more-obsessed-with-cat-videos eye of Reddit took notice. Minutes later, a snapshot of Sosowski’s handout was on the front page of the geek-tested, President-of-the-United-States-approved aggregate site. So Sosowski ran an AMA, and The Pirate Bay decided that kind of community outreach warranted a reward.

“We’ve promoted authors (Paulo Coelho among others), movie producers, musicians, and card game creators so far, but haven’t really seen any super talented game submissions,” one of Pirate Bay’s organizers told me. “When browsing around Reddit one day, I noticed a thread about a Polish dude promoting the torrenting of his own game. So I threw him an email asking if he’d seen our Promo Bay idea and if he’d like to apply. He said hell yeah and that was it.”

“The Pirate Bay Promo is tied with a pay-what-you-want sale on McPixel website, and as of now, there have been around 170 purchases and the torrent has around 2500 seeds,” added Sosowski. “You might think that this points out what big of a problem piracy is, but this is just manipulating facts. Since you can get McPixel for even one cent, this proves that many people have no means of accessing games, and for some, pirating might be the only way to play. It is developers’ fault that they do not provide means for everyone, and I am most at fault, enabling only PayPal-driven purchases.”

Ultimately, that’s the point of all this for both Sosowski and The Pirate Bay: to deal with piracy on its own terms in a day and age where it can no longer simply be shrugged off or pushed back against – despite how desperately many people would like to. It’s tempting, sure, to view piracy as the Big Bad Wolf blowing down houses developers have spent years assembling, but both parties told me – on no uncertain terms – that they don’t view piracy as an enemy. That’s too simple, and in taking such a combative stance, you risk missing the chance to understand why these things keep happening in the first place.

“Piracy is a response, like a rebellion,” opined Sosowski. “When there is rebellion in an unspecified country, it has its reasons. These reasons should be identified and dealt with – not the rebellion itself. Major publishers should ask, ‘Why? What do you want? What can we change?’ I can see that they might be reluctant thinking that ‘talking to barbarians who steal our stuff is not an option’. But it is in their interest to do so. They could gather a lot of fans and satisfied customers if they took the right approach – aka, not fighting to death.”

Meanwhile, Pirate Bay – obviously about as far from impartial as you could get in this scenario – takes things a few steps further. Or rather, it makes a running leap over the Grand Canyon, keeps going, and eventually circles around to Europe, where it wins the Tour de France on foot… further. But there’s certainly a method in what – to some – might seem like madness, and Pirate Bay already has and will continue to fight tooth-and-nail for that cause.

“When we got older (some of us were just in our teens when we started Pirate Bay) and travelled the world, we realized that Pirate Bay meant more than just getting some MP3s for free,” the Pirate Bay organizer told me. “People in less fortunate countries than ours really really needed us. To share secret information, to see culture from forbidden countries, or to find out that there is an alternative to what the mainstream media feeds them. This might sound a bit cheesy to people in the US or EU, but go to Syria (50K visits each day), Saudi Arabia (1M visits), China (800K visits, though most Chinese use proxies) and so on and so on, and ask those people what The Pirate Bay means to them. It has made us a bit more humble.”

Ultimately, though, The Pirate Bay’s current model is still definitely problematic – whether its heart is in the right place or not. Sure, not every pirated copy of something directly equates to a lost sale, but it’d be utterly preposterous to suggest that piracy’s not hurting many creators in a big way. And so, The Pirate Bay does nothing of the sort. Instead, it sees this as a situation where hopefully – at the end of the day – the pros outweigh the cons.

“It’s a tough question, and I wont lie or evade the answer by telling you that some creators don’t get hurt by what we do – cause some do,” the organizer admitted. “But on the other hand, others benefit. We’ve seen numbers of people actually using TPB to their advantage during the years. Nine Inch Nails used TPB to better connect to their fans – and probably gained both new fans and money in the long run. Some major TV networks actually (secretly) released pilots of their own shows on our site to create some kind of a buzz.”

“We believe that the technology is too good not to be used and that it would be a step back in time not to use it. Things will only move on faster from this so each artist that deals with immaterial ‘property’ had better step it up before it’s too late. As the old Chinese proverb goes: ‘When the winds of change blow, some seek shelter, others build windmills.'”

In Sosowski’s opinion, though, it’s less about building a windmill and more about constructing a bridge.

“Piracy is not an enemy,” he explained. “I can’t be orthodox about it, and want my game to retain value – not just give it away for free – and cater to people that have no means to access it otherwise as well. I sarcastically say that ‘real pirates use torrents’, which are not only means of distribution, but provide community. A community of gamers, enthusiasts, fans, and cool people overall, who want to enjoy and share.”

This is, however, terrifyingly uncharted territory, so – at this point – it’s all about measured steps forward mixed with more-than-a-teensy-bit of good old-fashioned fumbling around in the dark. But progress is being made – agonizingly slow thought it might seem.

“Having 20-30 artists get their three days of fame is not enough,” the Pirate Bay organizer said of The Promo Bay’s current state. “So we’re building a dedicated site as we speak that will allow everyone to post their artist profile. If everything works out, we’ll let the audience choose the promo for every week.”

Sosowski, on the other hand, doesn’t have much in the way of experience running file-sharing sites that pull in millions of people every day. He can, however, offer some advice to developers who feel like pirates are constantly besieging them on all sides.

“There are frustrating situations, where a game is pirated a lot but the sales are low – and especially so within indie game developer community, where being poor is not uncommon,” he said. “I can relate, and I would probably get frustrated myself, with my fridge empty and people playing my games for free. But staying angry and frustrated never solves anything. My advice is to think twice, then twice again, and keep in mind that people who pirate your game don’t live in your fridge. They cannot possibly know the source of your frustration. Tell them what’s up and remember that there are real people on the other side. Never let yourself get frustrated over people actually enjoying your game.”

“Stop hating, and start talking and understanding. This goes to both sides of this conflict. Don’t hate people for wanting to play your game. And don’t hate people for getting mad at you not paying them for their work.”

McPixel is currently available for whatever-you-want-to-pay on its official site. It’s also very, very silly. Give it a shot, if you’re feeling so inclined.

Your property is like an egg. Torrenting is like a frying pan. When you torrent, it’s like squishing an egg into the pan. Fry it on medium flame. Add salt. I recommend adding just a tiinsy amount of powdered garlic. Add thinly sliced bacon. What’s the bacon? Bacon is in all of us! It’s like a heart. Mmmm nice bacon! Turn it over few times till its white becomes nice and golden-brown. Don’t forget to baste the yolk with hot fat, or it’ll be too liquid!
And there you have it! Bon appet… wait what?

Indeed. Whether people like it or not, the simple fact is that technology has made paying for most forms intellectual property practically voluntary. The best response to this, is to accept it and use whatever means you can to encourage people to choose to pay. This means making the payment frictionless, offering services to paying customers and just generally treating customers with respect.

This is something I’ve been saying for some time now. Whether one likes it or not, whether one considers it immoral or not, piracy is here and paying for anything digital is a voluntary act. You can attempt to coerce that act, which virtually never works and engenders plenty of ill will that makes it unlikely that people will voluntarily decide to give you money, or you can attempt to foster a spirit of good will and bonhomie, and people can and will respond to that.

And, ultimately, if your business model can’t survive in the face of piracy, it’s time to find a business model that can. That may not be what anyone wants, but it’s the reality.

Oh FFS, not again. Firstly, Farmville and D3 are not the future of PC gaming. Look at Ubisoft’s change of mind and at Zynga’s financial issues. Also at Diablo 3’s failure to draw people to RMAH for longer. That’s first point.

Secondly, the existence of these games is not pirate’s fault. It’s because of greedy people in Zynga and Blizzard. Have you ever played FarmVille? It has nothing to do with preventing piracy, it could be almost completely offline and connecting only for “shopping”. Which is exactly how all the shitty Zynga (and Zyngish) games are working on smartphones. it’s about forcing you to start paying for stuff that will make your game less annoying. That’s why Zynga is called a “cancer of games industry”. Because they kill all the fun and make you pay for feeling less terrible.

As for D3, It’s also not because of pirates. The whole fucking game is designed around Auction House so Blizzard can get it’s share. Always On in this game is a result of developer’s greed, not piracy. If you think I’m wrong, explain to me, why getting proper gear is a pain in the arse on the higher levels, instead of being just, you know, fun? Yes, Diablo 3 is slightly less annoying FarmVille. Block me for this opinion, if you want it.
/rant

All in all, piracy is a problem but please don’t use crappy arguments to support your case. Thank you.
/rant for real

Another business model that works? Kickstarter. Another? Indie bundles. Another? Steam sales. It’s hard to say if AAA development as we know it will continue to be viable (I don’t see any reason it wouldn’t be as long as they get a bit more sane on the budget front – those games still sell in quantity – but evidently many companies don’t see a value in merely modest success so they may feel otherwise), but I don’t think we’re in any real danger of the entire market descending into the sort of actively consumer-hostile structures represented by Zynga and Diablo 3.

I skipped he ubisoft threads but Ubisoft have NOT “changed their mind”. Anno 2070 is listed as a game without always on DRM, but it requires a connection to their servers all the time you’re playing certain modes, the fun ones.

I’ll judge their announcement on AC3, though I’ll probably buy it on PS3 because that’s where I played the others.

Sorry, I’m a little smarter than that. Maybe you haven’t been reading everything our friend Yves has been saying over the last year, the DRM announcement was nothing unexpected to anyone paying attention. You can drop DRM without consequence when your business is moving to f2p. Diablo 3 and Farmville, thanks pirates.

Yes it did take them longer to crack D3 ( in comparison to the ubiserver which was available in the first week after Assassins Creed 2’s release, it was stable a week later an a full crack was released about a month after that ) but it got dealt with.

DRM was made by people who are unable or unwilling to adjust their business model but then they discovered that they can excuse locked-down control systems with piracy and abuse the systems to monetize their product even further.

Now theyre trying to tell us that we dont own the games/software we buy and arent allowed to resell them and people actually start to believe them…
If i pay x amount of money for i product i own something that is worth the amount of money i paid for it and its my good right to do whatever i want with it.

I mean every since we’re able to store any kind of data it was shared, from people lending books/vinyl/tapes/cd’s to each other to people copying them or recording radio stations etc. In a world were everything isnt directly owned by you and is instead stored on an account youre not allowed to share with anybody ( itunes ) noone would be able to share anything ( aside from watching music/listening to music at your friends house )
I believe the only reason why companys started to fight piracy was that they saw an opportunity to stop all sharing and get even more money. They didnt loose money to piracy when the internet started to get popular, they lost it to independed musicians/studios which before didnt have a platform to advertise on ( since radio/tv are too expensive and monopolized through the high prizes )
The thing they dont understand is that people dont want to spend more of their monthly income on entertainment. The only way to get people to buy more, is to created really good products they WANT to buy ( ie. someone hears a great song on his friends ipod, borrows the cd and maybe buys it later on because he really like the music )

You might want to look into whether that server emulator actually works for the whole game with all the proper behavior such that it could replicate the experience of using a legitimate launch copy of the game. Not even an up to date patched version, just launch. (Hint: It doesn’t. Not even close.)

I also realised that some people are unable to do that, since PayPal is not accessible in their country, or they don’t have a credit card

I’ve mentioned this fact several times before and got hate-hammered for it, as many people have trouble understanding, that a credit card isn’t as widespread and readily available outside of their country as it may seem. There are countries which use different systems. A credit card is a luxury good and often enough out of reach, even for people with a decent job. Prepaid Credit Cards are even more rare in some areas, with Paysafe Card currently rising in popularity. For a pretty long time, PSC was my only means to buy stuff online as every other system available to me was based on credit card – and credit card only.

I don’t pirate stuff but I don’t buy them either if a lack of payment options prevents me from doing so.

Exactly. I have a debit card and while my previous one allowed me to make purchases online (if they were compatible with visa) with the current one I can only make purchases in shops. To make purchases online I have to transfer money to PayPal or other similar thing.

Utter nonsense. Debit cards are tied to Visa, Mastercard, etc. just like a credit card and are used in exactly the same way. When you run a payment with a debit card, you can run it as credit or direct debit from the account. You sound like an elderly person talking about computers.

No they’re not. Here (.be, but goes for the most of .eu) a CC has a fixed cost per year to even get one from most banks. Debit cards can not be used online except on a very limited number of sites (usually other .be sites) if the site in question has an agreement with your bank. CC’s are not uncommon, but most people have one specifically because they want to buy stuff online.
I’ve never encountered an international site that accepts a debit card. That’s why a lot of people (especially minors who can’t get a CC) wire over money to a Paypal account so they can shop online.

So NO you can not buy online with a debit card, but you CAN buy things with Paypal without owning a credit card.

@Vercinger: in the US these are pretty much extinct. I’m not sure what the issues are, but the banks started pushing visa/mastercard connectivity with debit cards very hard around 1996, and for a while you could still get one without if you were very insistent. I doubt it at this point.

No, Debit cards are NOT accepted EVERYWHERE. The majority of places, and the majority of cards, yes… there’s no difference between a Debit and a Credit card. But some places will only accept a genuine Credit card, and will deny Debit cards.

And you live in a country where debit cards are associated with credit card companies and thus function in all the same places credit cards do, just like the US. What people are saying, and what you are evidently not reading, is that there are plenty of countries where this is not the case.

This is incorrect.
I live in Poland, my debit card has MasterCard logo on it, and I cannot use it to pay for things online. I tried. Both PayPal and Steam refuse the card. Also, the bank’s support confirms this, and AFAIK no Polish bank allows online purchases with debit cards.
Since I cannot aquire a CC (I’m a student, no stable income), I have to pay equivalent of $10 per year for an ‘electronic card’ that I have to transfer money to before each purchase.

Please check your facts before you asure everyone that your experience is the only one, thanks.

Debit cards are accepted EVERYWHERE. To say otherwise is just plain WRONG, and FUD. It oftne crops up when people try to excuse why they ‘can’t’ buy a game legally.

Look man, I get why you’re angry. And i’m not gonna take your barrage personally. But what you claim to be wrong is actually correct, although I think I know where your information went awry. Debit cards are accepted almost everywhere – when it comes to local at location appliances. Read: You can use your debit card to draw cash at almost every cashpoint. Even international. The everywhere aspect is true for this part.

Problem is, you didn’t do your research deep enough. You’re from the UK, no? The UK uses international debit cards so that would explain why it worked for you. Online Payment is an entirely different matter here. Some countries, even in the western hemisphere, only offer national versions of debit cards. Most are slowly converting to international standards – but are way past the times. The situation might go away in a couple of years, hell it probably will.

Still, you can use those local debit cards to:
Draw money wherever (if the institutes are having certain Partnerships).
Purchase online in national shops (if they choose to allow Debit Cards which a lot of shops don’t, you’d be surprised).

You however can NOT use those local debit cards to:
Purchase online in international shops.

Purchases in international shops are the realm of international credit cards. Which are not readily available to a lot of people. It’s quite common that they come with requirements:

– Age 18 or above (a lot of lost legal customers below that age barrier)
– Steady Income (which rules out the majority of University Students, since they often do irregular part-time jobs).
– In some countries, the required steady also requires you to earn a certain minimal amount of money. Which can be well above the average wage.

So please don’t take these comments as pirate excuses when they’re actually valid problems. Yes, pirates will use any excuse – but don’t throw in actual customers when you throw punches. And please with a cherry on top, don’t accuse them of lying when you’re the one mal-informed.

Here in Canada, it was only about a year or so that my bank introduced a visa debit card (the first credit tied debit card in the country). Before that, I could transfer money to paypal from my bank account, though that wasn’t terribly convenient for impulse purchases (like games).

Even worse, I have to pirate everything on my android phone because google won’t accept my visa debit card.

It’s sad to see that the developer of some of my favorite games is so unaware of the world’s financial system. As many others already pointed out, debit cards functioning as credit cards for the purpose of online payments is not a global standard yet. Hell, having a bank account at all is not common. Nor is having a card tied to your account.

Don’t use debit cards online. If you get scammed on a purchase with a credit card, you can dispute the transaction before it goes through. If you get scammed on a purchase with a debit card, there’s nothing you can do; the money is already gone.

I mean, in an ideal world every company follows best practices and is PCI compliant, and there’s never malicious people trying to take your money. But this isn’t the case.

That depends. My debit card in almost every circumstance is treated as being a credit card, complete with processing delay, and my bank will reverse fraudulent debit transactions (which I was very grateful for when someone got my card number and used it to make several purchases from Walmart’s website a year or two back).

I think it depends on the bank as well. I use a debit card pretty much exclusively for nearly all my purchasing, both online and off, I hardly ever withdraw cash these days, even the pub takes a card.

My bank, Barclays, are pretty hot on spotting fraudulant use online and will even ring me up if they think they have spotted unusual purchasing habits on my card. And so far on the one occasion a few years back when my card had been compromised and used for unauthorised purchases, they refunded me back the money within a couple of days, and that’s with a debit card not a credit card. Say what you will about Barclays, some of their customer services are second to non, excellent online banking facilities, good fraud prevention and so far I’ve never had problems with delays to payments etc like my wages and what not.

The main differences between my debit and credit card are that purchases made with the credit card are insured, ie you get ripped off by a vendor you can get the money back from the credit card company, you don’t have that option with the debit card. Also of course the main thing is that the credit card offers you just that, credit. It’s just an easy way of borrowing money essentially, although often at horribly expensive rates should you let repayment lapse, though no where near as bad as a pay day loan. Whereas your debit card is dirrectly linked to the funds within your bank account. But apart from that for all intents purposes my debit card functions just like a credit card when purchasing online.

Another major banking difference between the UK and most of the rest of the world is that the majority of our ATM’s are free to use, regardless of what bank you’re with or whose ATM you’re using. I know in many other parts of the world you often get charged for every ATM transaction.

Yes, there really are countries where you get no card with your bank account. At least not by default.

I live in Bulgaria, a member of the EU, mind you, and you have to specifically ask for a debit card if you want one, and make a separate contract. Cards are never even brought up when you’re making an account, everyone assumes you won’t need one. Also, if you want to make online payments, you have to specifically ask for a Visa debit card. By default, if you say you want a debit card, they’ll hand you a contract for a Maestro one. And those are only good for shops and a small number of online retailers.

Germany predominantly use the EC (Electronic Cash) Debit Cards that work in about every shop you want to buy stuff around physically and a lot of Online shops around Germany but not much else, they aren’t really all that accepted Online or internationally. For a long time I’ve used Credit Cards of family members or PayPal and more recently PaySafe Cards for most of my Online Purchasing since I frankly didn’t need a Credit Card for much else.

i realise some people might think this is a foolish statement to make; but they do seem to be somewhat concerned with the ethics and implications of piracy, and how it can be used to enable a more active and self aware form of digital citizenship – for example, their advocating in favor of various european political pirate parties, and raising issues about increased governmental control of user data. i think they would have more of a solid moral ground if the site didn’t have all the sleazy semi-porn advertising banners on occasion tho.

You got that right. They are one of the few who’ve managed to make themselves extremely profitable, and at the same time probably the only one to have worked themselves into the status of being looked at as sorta legitimate. How many other torrent sites get contextual links on respected sites (like RPS) that offer illegal copies of games, movies, child porn, autopsy photos of dead children, etc?

The only point you’re making is with your finger going in other directions.

Sure, I agree it’d be great if google results didn’t include things like warez, TPB, etc…and well getting linkbacks from high ranked sites like RPS (google pagerank 6) isn’t helping…but thats not what were talking about. Its a totally different thing altogether.

We are talking about TPB. A site that earns large amounts of money for offering one service (its in the name :) ) Stay on track.

For me the choice is clear, I’ve yet to see the MAFIAA helping independent projects, there are hundred of stories about small time independent projects getting turned down by big name publishers, heck, Amazon has made that their work horse for self publishing under the kindle. So, I’m where the indies are and where the nazi SS is not.

They also helped kick off the pirate party movenent, which is one of the last political establishments that actively tries to prevent a “we store ALL the data, forever, and if you are against this, you are a child raping bomb terrorist, clearly” 1984 development that has been running amok for the last 10 years; they are actively helping prevent idiocy like PIPA and SOPA; they fought against a logic where government had the brilliant idea to put a stop sign in front of web pages that might not “be for you”; they are against disconnecting people from the internet for downloading stuff, etc.

If you really think the pirate bay and party are just about musix warez for your mp3 players, then you are just so incredibly politically short-sighted it hurts.

These days, being a pirate in a larger sense of the word is very much also connected to the cause of being anti-censorship, anti-surveillance state and pro freedom of information.

That someone who clicks a torrent for a game isn’t a political activist is clear; but to not realize that the pirate movement exists as well and may end up being fairly crucial as to where whole societies are moving is just as stupid.

Technically they aren’t doing any such thing, which is why their site is still unassailably online despite all the efforts to take it down. In their beginnings they offered allowing users to upload *.torrent files to their site as a service and just didn’t moderate it in any way or form what they put on it (aside of child pornography and similar I think, they deleted that).
Now they aren’t even doing that anymore, since they aren’t even hosting any more torrents.
The only thing they are allowing now is users to upload magnet links, which are just a string of numbers and letters and can be used by torrent clients, for instance: “magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:YNCKHTQCWBTRNJIV4WNAE52SJUQCZO5C” that would be a link (from Wikipedia)

They haven’t ever and especially now aren’t hosting any infringing content themselves, in fact a copy of their entire site/service was only 90MB earlier this year: link to torrentfreak.com

And yes, they are getting money from visitors by using commercials, so does RPS.
Does RPS “make money off of the hard work of others” by hosting screenshots and videos of videogames and getting money for the Hits? After all most of what they are doing concerns content that other people made.

@D3xter
I’m aware of how they do things (magnet links) — nobody ever said they weren’t going out of their way to try n skirt laws… And a comparison to RPS? Really? Do the differences between the 2 really need to be explained?

@RegisteredUser “It wasn’t/isn’t related to my point at all.”
I think what you’re missing is that you changed the subject in response to _me_. You’re ‘point’ about there being bad government bills and some pirate party doesn’t have anything to do with what was being discussed in the first place.

I can relate with his story. In Indonesia, it’s hard to make a credit card that you will need to buy game and the availability of legal game is scarce. Not to mention the internet connection had a high latency, so you can’t play games with constant internet connection, and internet is expensive. Also, the game price is quite high, it’s about 2/3rd of your salary (in Indonesia). So, it’s very hard to buy legal game because of the buying method, availability, requirement, and price. If game publisher can find a way around this, they probably can drop the piracy rate.

Wow, there’s another Indonesian here. Nice to see you, guys.
BTW, I’ve been bought few legal game through GOG and Gamersgate recently using my paypal account, you know via VCC and local paypal vendor. Sadly, I still have to buy the pirated version of my legal game due to our poor internet connection. So, it’s just my moral decision to do that, and there’s nothing to do with what service they offered to me, as a consumer. Damn, I hope they saw us as a potential market, I’m pretty sure with the right price they’re gonna get more income from us.

It’s a heartwarming story but also treading a dangerous line. If you reward those who steal from you* with your product for free, what message does it send to those who had bought your game? And what message does it send to your future customers? That it’s better to torrent your future games and wait for you to turn your “other cheek” and send some free codes to the torrent comments?

Of course it’s a good move to talk to the people who like your game, whether they bought or pirated it; but do you really want to reward the pirates for pirating?

* Not really steal but enjoy your work without paying you the price you established.

Why is it wrong for people to enjoy your work without paying for you? How many of us would be here today if our parents did not feed us freely? Or who goes to a party looking to get paid for telling a joke or singing a karaoke?

Yes, pirating is not right in this case. But if you put in effort to make your game both viable as freely distributed and paid for, then go for it. If your freely distributing it, it can’t (by definition ;) ) be pirated anymore! :D

I’ll be pointing out the obvious: your parents have no choice in the matter. Try not feeding a child and see what happens.

Before someone says “culture goods are not food” – man does not live on bread alone. Refusing people access to popular culture unless they pay arbitrary prices is abusive. Especially against young people who simply NEED to try various things out before they have a taste of their own and can pick and choose.

That being said if you are over age of, say, 24 and still pirate games you need to rethink your life. You no longer live off pocket money and your tastes should be refined enough for you not to buy 5 games a month. You also have no time to play more than one game. So what is the benefit of remaining a non-paying consumer?

I believe I hear privilege talking. Yes, privilege. The line of thinking in which accustomisation to luxury becomes equated with necessity. You are aware that most of mankind’s history people have had to do without computergames? Maybe it slipped your mind?

Sure, people can and have done without games (TV, movies, books, etc). But they no longer have to if they have internet access. Should they pay for that content if they can? Absolutely. But if they can’t, it benefits no one for them to take on some sort of holy moral stance and make their lives poorer than they already are.

Oh, I’m not some kind of crusader. It’s just that partaking of something without authorisation from someone else who has worked hard for to create that product still seems a bad thing. However, I do fully agree that it’s better to find out what drives these people and to encourage them to try and buy (or whatever) than to shut them down if it’s not a true drain on gaming.

On the other hand, considering some piracy numbers (compared to sales), even taking into account whether the people behind those numbers would’ve otherwise have bought a specific product, it seems to me that piracy can sometimes be okay, but is mostly harmful. The allusion to the idea that people are less inclined to buy software because it’s so easy to pirate earlier in the comments here points to that. Less pirate bays, less piracy. The question then becomes what to do.

Like I say, it’s better to buy. It’s better to compensate content creators for their time and effort, and support the things you enjoy. But I think it’s better to enjoy those things and have those experiences than not. I spent 13 years of my life as a reader with no income to actually buy books (ages 3 to 16) and even now I don’t really have the ability to buy books as fast as I can consume them. But thanks to the public library system, I have been able to read all those books, learn which authors I enjoy and who to spend the money I do spend on, learn concepts and vocabulary and styles and techniques, etc. I know that piracy isn’t -quite- equivalent (after all, the libraries are authorized to loan those books and there’s limited availability), but the principle, I think, is the same. And there are certainly authors who rail against the existence of libraries.

If I walked into a coffee shop and helped myself to a cappuccino, if I walked into a clothing store and picked up a couple of suits that caught my fancy, if I walked out on a restaurant tab, I think even the most hardened red diaper baby would agree that, yes, I’m doing wrong. But somehow fourteen hours a day spent hunched over a keyboard doesn’t count as productive labor? Writers, artists, game developers are basically supposed to live in the hopes that an appreciative public will toss them a few quid so they can eat that day? Really, that’s the argument you want to make?

Art and culture certainly occupies a different space than normal, physical goods, I do appreciate that. I can enjoy a Cézanne without having to pay some clearinghouse for the right (at least, until the next round of intellectual property treaties get in, and then they’ll probably tax my eyeballs), but I don’t get to hang it on my wall without buying it. If an artist’s work is still under copyright — say, Atta Kim’s photography — then I also can’t hang it on my wall without buying a print, of which a portion goes back to the artist, and they get to eat for another day and maybe produce another work without having to check the want ads for a chip shop job.

If I publish a book, then it might be purchased by a public library or other lending house, for the use of the public. Yay for the public space; free access to books and media is a powerful and necessary part of a healthy democracy.* But each book can only be read by one person at a time, and must be returned thereafter — it’s not a clear substitute for ownership, and very popular books will perforce be purchased in larger numbers by libraries. Thus, the author receives some payment, and the public receives access to works they might not otherwise be able to afford. (The academic model basically runs on library purchases, which is why so many academic press books run into the hundreds-plus in price.)

But if anyone, anywhere, just downloads the works without any recompense, then the model breaks down entirely, and we’re back to artists shivering in unheated garrets while dying of tubercular infections. Asking them to depend on a few bitcoins tossed over from Pirate Bay is just robbing them of their dignity, and telling them that their work is less valuable than that of “real” workers. Bittorrent is not a public library; it’s simply the flipside to the brutal, monoply thuggishness of music and film-industry IP groups.

I’d address the ludicrous idea that access to “Transformers 3″ or “Call of Duty” is somehow a human right, especially when compared to, say, works on Rawlsian theory, but I think I’m out of time, space, and breath.

* Of course, even the Library Company of Philadelphia, the ur-library of the west — ignoring the farsighted libraries of ancient and high-culture Middle East — wasn’t free; members paid about £257 in current costs to join, and £64 in current costs per annum thereafter, which was by no means cheap, but within the means of a relatively well-off colonial urban dweller.

Even the specialized libraries at some of the bigger universities don’t have all the books and papers and magazines written on a particular subject.
Let alone any library encompassing not just books, magazines and comics, but also movies, series, games, music..

In short, what a nonsensical thing to say and compare the internet to.
A library? Sure, insofar as they provide free unfettered access to the internet, I guess.

Culture isn’t just what has been deigned or allowed to be accessible, that’s the very problematic core of all of this. Not everyone has access to everything equally, and some argue thats perfectly fine that way, because capitalism, and some argue that public, free knowledge should be more important than having a class system (or ruling 1% creating rules that benefit them first and keep the remaining 99% right where they should be, in the remaining 99%, e.g.).

I agree that people should be paid for their work. I think that the journalism industry is evil for illegally exploiting young people and making them work for free in order to enter the industry in the same way that I believe that you should pay for goods and services (note that games are a luxury and not an essential good). If this means pirating and giving to a creator some other way, then maybe, yeah, sure, if it works.

I agree that the current system of treating games as physical items doesn’t work so well, and people should always try to make their products as widely available as possible (DVD regions can go to hell, for example), and I would even advocate a completely different economic system if a viable one existed (God knows capitalism is broken) but this is no justification for piracy. I cannot comprehend the idea that taking someone’s work without paying for it is like a parent feeding their child. While monetary exchange exists, it is unethical to break an implicit contract with someone who has worked hard to provide you with something. It’s not stealing, sure, but that’s a legal quibble. It’s still wrong.

@Revisor
That’s only the case if you assume the only reason customers pay is to get your content. Clearly the fact that any one of them could have pirated it shows that there must be another reason they paid. I’d say that many customers pay because they want to support the developer, and those people aren’t going to stop paying just because they could get it for free.

You’re right, it’s better to keep your imaginary moral high ground and treat all your customers as potential thieves. It’ll work wonders for your reputation. Look at how well it worked out for Ubisoft!

I’m not really sure the ‘reward for theft’ idea really works here – it’s not as though anyone’s handing out medals to muggers. Sosowski pretty specifically deflated the idea that all piracy is easily definable as theft driven by avarice or sloth. It’s interesting that a wretched hive of scum and villainy like TPB can be used effectively as a marketing tool. As to what message it sends to legit or future customers, it seems to be largely one of goodwill. I’d expect that people who bought McPixel were well aware they could have pirated it instead…

You have to be savvier than that and look at the big picture. Sure, having a game out for free means you might not get as much money out of it than you would’ve in the entirely hypothetical situation of it only being available at your arbitrary fixed price.

However, that game will give you exposure. The more people play it, the greater. When your next game comes out, you’ll have people who know about you already. Those who did not pay for your first game may decide to pay for this new one, on the basis that they liked the last one. Meanwhile, those who would never be customers because they can’t afford it or don’t have payment methods available to them or whatever can still enjoy your work and spread the word about it.

The entire thing is a lot more subtle than a binary sale/no-sale value for each player. If it were, there’d be no reason for authors like Brandon Sanderson to give away one of their (excellent, I might add) books for free under Creative Commons. That they do implies that there is a value in doing this.

Your view of humans appears to be pretty sad if you think people would be angry over the charity of another. I may not be interested in this game but I bought betrayal at krondor and then it came out for free and I was just happy other people could play it. If games are art, then we who are in a position to buy the game are the patrons. (Am I the only person who paid above the average for indie bundles?)

I think it’s a pretty accurate view. People will be angry about it. The question is, do those people matter, and is that anger actually justified? I’d say for the most part no, and no. And there will be people who think you’re doing a cool thing and support you accordingly.

I remember Intrusion 2’s dev also encouraged someone in his blog to downnload his game in TPB if he didn’t want to pay for a flash game. If he wanted to play it, he could just do that, paying for it was only if he wanted more games like it to be funded in the future.

I wonder if it actually did, or whether it was one of of the near infinite false alarms caused by virus scanner heuristics not feeling comfortable around various assembler / programming tricks obfuscating code or packing bits.

Interesting story, and it’s good for him that he was able to accept TPB distributing and profiting from his work. But what about those who don’t accept it? Who don’t consent to it? Who don’t want their creative work distributed in this way? Do they not get a choice?

McPixel is the first, it’s going to be talked about, it’s going to get a lot of attention… and it’s going to make a lot of money now. But what about in a years time, when it’s a different game being promoted? Will the attention still be there, and will that game make a lot of money? Will TPB’s leverage pay off for every artist that engages with them? Will their 2 or 3 days of promotion be enough? What about games/artists who don’t get promoted, but still make their game available through this in the hopes that it will pay off?

As the article says, it’s uncharted territory. I don’t think there’ll be room enough for everyone to win from this.

Indeed. Sorry to say it but Sos’s game looks like it can afford to be pirated. That is to say, it looks to be built on a shoe string. Putting your game on TPB is infinitly easier when you haven’t invested yours and other peoples time and money.

He didn’t put it on TPB, though. He merely engaged with the community there when someone else did. It’s an infinitely more sensible approach than fuming about it and trying to stamp out something that’s going to happen anyway. And yes, it’s easier to make that call when you’re one guy and don’t have to check with anyone else to see if that’s okay.

“Interesting story, and it’s good for him that he was able to accept TPB distributing and profiting from his work. But what about those who don’t accept it? Who don’t consent to it? Who don’t want their creative work distributed in this way? Do they not get a choice?”

No, they don’t, and that’s just the reality of the digital distribution landscape and it’s not something any amount of moralizing is going to change, no matter how much we might want it to. I don’t think promoting through pirate bay is the best way to handle this either, because those profits are going toward supporting the infrastructure through which nonconsenting creators’ work is going to be distributed, but every creator does need to be aware of the reality and to address it somehow.

I agree; people should be able to do business in the way they wish, with the proviso that if they limit their distribution artificially then people will try to find a way around that (the limitations of the licensing of film and TV does annoy me). I have avoided several Ubisoft games on the basis of their DRM system, which I understood made their products inferior. Simply because you can physically do something, it doesn’t make it right to do so.

So while the pragmatism of the creator here is laudable (it’s not like he can fight piracy all that effectively), it doesn’t justify the pirating of games in the majority of cases (I suspect most pirates don’t live behind state firewalls in China or the Middle East).

McPixel is the first, it’s going to be talked about, it’s going to get a lot of attention… and it’s going to make a lot of money now. But what about in a years time, when it’s a different game being promoted? Will the attention still be there, and will that game make a lot of money? Will TPB’s leverage pay off for every artist that engages with them? Will their 2 or 3 days of promotion be enough?

Absolutely agree that this is a major issue. Part of the exposure McPixel is going to get from this from putting his “promo” up on a popular website. But an even larger part of any money he receives will be from all the news articles and stories going up around the games industry about this. RPS will write an article about this game, and maybe some other unusual use of “Promo Bay” sometime a couple of months from now, but they will not be making a regular feature about it. The next game to take this route will not have near this amount of press behind it. And the game after that will have even less.

I feel like this is what has happened with other sales fads that have come up in the last couple of years. The first few times indie games had “pay what you want” sales it was huge news. Everyone knew about them, and many people who are not as plugged into the indie scene first heard about games like World of Goo through that sale. Similarly the first Humble Indie Bundle was famous. Everyone jumped in to throw some money at it, even if they owned more than half of the games already, because of the novelty of it and the charity aspect and the “indies working together exactly unlike the big publishers” warm fuzzy vibe of it all. Now there seems to be a new, no-name bundle coming out every week that everyone completely ignores.

This one seems more dangerous for the followers though. Because if no one buys your bundle, then at least there’s no real harm done. But if people stop donating to “Promo Bay” games because its become too commonplace, and people still keep on pirating games, possibly emboldened by the seeming legitimization by the owners, then that could cause real harm to parts of the indie community.

People were pirating indie games long before this, people will continue to pirate indie games after this. People pirate. But an indie game creator that engages with the community in a positive way will earn good will, and they’ll earn sales. I do expect the novelty here will generate more attention (and thus, sales) than similar approaches down the road, but it’s unlikely to ever hurt.

“Promo Bay” isn’t new, this just so happens to be the first game put up on there: link to torrentfreak.com
Usually it is used by music artists to promote their work by putting up songs and the likes, and yes even without the “Press”, being on the site with a lot of people and traffic for several days will be helpful.

In some cases artists can even make more money that way by using all these “awful awful” platforms as promotion and working together with them than not: link to techdirt.com

They mentioned there’d been 170 (pay what you want) sales and 2500 seeders after the promo. I’m not sure you can assume (which they do) that the difference of 2330 equates to people downloading the game who have no means to pay for the game. What it could also show, is that some people won’t even pay a cent for something when they can get it for free.

Whether that has something to say about the convenience (or lack thereof) of online payment or the fact that there are some people out there who don’t attach any intrinsic value to a creative work I don’t know.

A big part of the problem about discussion around this subject is the woolliness of the data. Recent examples: the whole 95% piracy thing from Ubi (no breakdown by territory/game/accessibility) and TPBs own data about access from highly censored countries (above) which is meaningless without comparison to countries that have legal/conventional access to the paid-for content that’s being distributed (ie they say: ‘look 1M people access the site from Saudi: we are promoting freedom of expression!’ but without also telling us how many people are downloading from territories where there is no restriction on the content apart from cost that number is pretty meaningless.

There always seems to be a spin in one direction or another, and that stops anyone getting to the bottom of the whole thing and working out a way forward.

I wasn’t actually suggesting that was what was happening, just that their conclusion was by no means the only (or even the first) one you could come to.

It’s worth remembering that, rather than punishing people who have bought the game, what Sos is doing here is directly targeting people who are not, and then asking them to pay for it in the nicest possible way.

Which is kind of my point. We don’t know. About anything. Which is what makes torrent-centric discussions about piracy so frustrating.

I know it says ‘amateur’ in my handle, but I am actually paid to do science, and every time I see stats being thrown around by either (highly polarised) side of the debate about this stuff it drives me mental because we can’t judge for ourselves and there’s nobody out there with access to the data that doesn’t have a pro- or anti-piracy agenda.

Even in science one can make some assumptions. one of those is that one can safely assume at least a large part of those seeders has downloaded without paying. We can never know why though, unless we interview a lot of them I guess.

He chooses to view it positively, I would personally think most of them is due to the involved ‘friction’ of paying. people are lazy by nature. They still would have easily given him a dollar if it didn’t cost them ANY effort. One thing is sure though, he got a part of those sales ‘back’, just by taking this step. No amount of complaining or DRM would have gotten him those sales. That’s why it pays to be pragmatic and that is objectively true.

I still see the whole thing as far less than ideal. It’s like the developer equivalent of stockholme syndrome; you find out people have been exploiting your work, and you respond by saying “never mind, just feel free to throw me a penny once in a while…please?” I don’t want to see this happen to devs, even if it is the most pragmatic solution. That’s why I don’t support this gimmick. I’d sooner be idealistic and reach for the seemingly impossible point for when people can’t pirate, than concede ground to piracy, and just give in to it.

“Piracy is a response, like a rebellion,” opined Sosowski. “When there is rebellion in an unspecified country, it has its reasons. These reasons should be identified and dealt with – not the rebellion itself.”

It’s nice to see that Sosowski has a better grasp of, well, everything than the entire UK government plus friends and the RIAA and friends. It’s a damn shame that he’s the exception and not the rule. :(

I think one aspect of piracy has not been touched here: people still consider pirating “cool”. Because Piracy is still illegal and yet relatively safe to pull off, people gravitate towards it rather than pay for stuff. They think that they can be badasses by being slightly beyond the grasp of law.

History has proven many times before that people like being rebellious. Be it music, movies, games or whatever, people like going against the norm. They don’t like society telling them what they should like.

I have never in my entire life seen or heard of anyone who pirates because it’s “cool”. Not even back when the internet was less available. Who the hell would think they’re a “badass” because they downloaded a file from the internet? You’ve got it all wrong.

I appreciate that the Pirate Bay tries to approach what it does from an ethical perspective. However, I believe in their case the pros are by far outweighed by the cons. Of course many people in underprivileged countries or places that have no Paypal use these services. But what are the figures, realistically? This would have to be someone with a relatively good internet connection and a decent enough PC for playing games. Despite living in a developing country, this person would probably be doing okay for him/herself.

I live in a country with low average income that doesn’t have Paypal access or usable internet. Typically people of modest means will play games in cybercafes and they might own a console. People with gaming PC’s are relatively well-off and they can definitely afford these games. And on top of that there’s hardly any downloading going on, they buy the games from stores that sell them on DVDs for a dollar or two.

The Pirate Bay may be helping a section of users but it’s also definitely helping a fairly big section of people who are doing okay for themselves and have access to payment services. These people are not disenfranchised consumers who are looking for a better business alternative, they’re simply cheap. And I don’t think we should give them a free ride in the interest of helping game distribution.

I admire what Sosowski did because it he tried to appeal to people’s sense of decency. But what’s the percentage of people who actually responded to his level-headed approach? Most would have just shrugged, ignored him completely and continued getting his game (which they definitely realize he worked hard on) without giving him anything.

Er.. what this man (or woman) said. This is also why I understand harsh drm (even if I don’t approve). It’s so easy to pirate without ever doing anything back and while it’s good to point at the other sides of piracy and some people who pirate one can’t unfortunately depend on peoples’ moral fiber sufficiently to generate an income.

That is exactly what everyone making a living off media for the last decade or more has been doing. Attempts to curb piracy have virtually universally failed. And yet, people can and do buy things that they could pirate. In droves.

My point is that fighting it doesn’t stop piracy. Getting people to -want- to pay does. And people obviously do want to pay for things, because they’re still doing it even though piracy is incredibly trivial to accomplish and the media sector of the economy has not only not collapsed, but is in fact doing billions of dollars in business.

PCs are required for a great many other tasks than “playing games”, especially in todays age where coding or web work can get you actual work (and money) and where the likes of Wikipedia and Google are some of the best and fastest ways to help you studying and similar.

Also, people in general do not hoard their money under the bed, they don’t go “HAHAHA I will get this for free and save this amount of money! HARRRR! And I’ll become a millionaire!” so thinking in black/white won’t help you at all, but they will put it towards other parts of their lives, maybe some arguably more important ones like food, clothes, family. When downloading something maybe it was just a game they tried for half an hour or music that they’ve listened to once and never again, but they bought some other piece or another game/album later. Generally someone IS going to “profit” from that money people make no matter what.

Regarding the moral implications, you’re basically arguing that nothing, EVER should be “free” despite having likely profitted well from things like libraries, radio, free TV, general culture and museums, education and more recently generally the Internet with all its “free” ressources and also journalism etc. you might have required to get from a newspaper previously and saying that they should rather continue living in their mud-houses instead.

And what some people don’t seem to recognize is that “piracy” is still perfectly legal in a lot of countries (although the US and the USTR are doing their best to rectify that situation), even in some you wouldn’t guess in the first place like the Netherlands or Suisse:link to torrentfreak.comlink to torrentfreak.com

Did everyone turn to downloading instead? Did they stop buying books and games, going to the cinema and concerts because downloading is legal? No they didn’t and they won’t even

What this prompted me to do by the way (as someone who doesn’t particularly give a fuck about his game or ever heard of it before) is that it put it on the landscape in the first place, I voted for it on Greenlight and while there won’t be any immediate effects since I don’t care enough to either download it or PayPal him money, when it comes to a Digital Distribution service I use like Steam and GoG I will most certainly pay for it because I like and want to support his standpoint.

I’d also like to point out that you should question what some of the copyright maximalist industries are trying to “sell” you on and in what way exactly you or humanity would benefit from it, from the more obvious ones regarding medical patents on even medicine regarding AIDS or cancer trying to prevent companies from preparing those cheaper, which would limit the deaths and suffering of millions of people worldwide to the less obvious “stories” and “arguments” they try to spin.

For instance in the 1930s when radio became a thing the music/recording industry ran up a storm, there were protests and it was predicted that the recording/music industry would end and all that, after all people would be getting music for free! The insanity of it, after all they had to pay for that before. A lot of companies even let their major stars sign agreements that they will stay away from this technological devilry and only rescinded after the fact when they couldn’t ignore it anymore and generally a lot of soul musicians using it got famous and all the publicity instead of them.
During this period they also invented the “licensing” model of businesses (like stores or restaurants) having to pay for using music commercially, same with advertisements.

Even more recently the movie industry was running a storm against the VCR and being able to copy/record movies in the 80s: link to forbes.com
From a famous speech of that time by Jack Valenti of the MPAA:

“I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone…

The Mediastat’s analyst says that 67 percent of the VCR owners own no prerecorded cassettes and 72 percent plan to buy one in the coming year and 48 percent have never rented a prerecorded cassette. The major source of programing material is home recording, which thus preempts prerecorded tapes and their revenue…

The loser will be your public because they don’t have these expensive machines. And that is what I am saying, sir. The public is the loser when creative property is taken and here is the reason why. The investment of hundreds of millions of dollars each year to produce quality programs to theaters and television will surely decline.”

Did the movie industry go away, did they decline?

They just failed in these particular cases because they weren’t large enough or didn’t put enough money into the legislative process, or alternatively because they couldn’t make their cases against the public strong enough.

To this date large book publishers still have something against libraries or the idea of them: link to techdirt.com

Even worse, industry giants like Monsanto dealing in biological patents on seeds, plants etc. are for years (successfully) trying to forbid people from “duplicating” these, not directly buying from them and are going around town sueing farmers and the likes for having any of their (unlicensed) seeds on their property, no matter how they got there.

Ask yourself in what kind of world you’d rather live in the future. One where big companies try to “protect” and surveil everyone and everything and are trying to pass laws like SOPA/ACTA/TPP and monetize everything as well as condemning any new technology that makes sharing or copying things easier or rather one where you can enjoy an open culture and everyone has a certain kind of living standard.
Is pure greed driven maximization of profit really a good reason to deprive large amounts of people of effectively what is the culture of these times?

I couldn’t agree more. While my vision of a perfect world is one where original creations are properly credited and rewarded, if I had to choose between complete control over copyright and no control at all, I’d definitely go with no control. Sure, it would mean much less content and innovation, but what does get created would be available to all.

This week on dragons den:
DRAGON: “So, tell us about your idea”.
DEV: “Its a game, that I give away for free, but because people are so nice, they donate if they like it”.
DRAGON: “So how many people have handed over money for your game?”
DEV: “Its great, people in Burundi can play it. They have a dictatorship, you know”.
DRAGON: “How many people paid?”
DEV: “And in China”
DRAGON: “HOW MANY PAID???”
DEV: “…..**pause** ….. 170. Out of a few million”
DRAGON: “I’m out”.

Every single one of those cents is one cent more than you would have had; anyone that pays only a cent on pay-what-you-want was obviously never going to buy the game at full price, they would have just pirated it anyway.

You see this logic a lot with pay-what-you-want schemes, people deriding all those who pay very little, only one, or a few cents. And yeah, I agree, that seems pretty cheap, and a little cheesy, but from the content creator’s point of view, because of the ubiquity and ease of piracy, every single media product is “pay what you want.” The difference being there are only two price points — either full retail price, or pirate for free. When you look at a pay-what-you-want scheme, and see the range of prices between 0 and whatever the price of the game was, what you’re really seeing is money that would have been lost had you gone only a more traditional sales route. That’s also what you see in every sale OVER the standard sale price.

That’s the thing about pay-what-you-wants that makes sense for digital products. Once you’ve made the product the price per additional copy produced is basically zero (it costs someone somewhere something for the bandwidth and the electricity to power said bandwidth, but that’s pretty minor). Given that you have an effectively infinite supply, normal economic rules stop making as much sense. When you have a limited supply it makes sense to set the price as high as you can while still selling all your copies. When you have infinite copies you cannot sell all of them, so maximizing absolute income becomes less about price per unit and more about getting the most out of as many people as possible, even if that means the most you can get out of someone is a cent, and even if that means the average price per unit plummets, so long as you maximize total money.

Put another way, with software it makes more sense to sell 10,100 copies for a cent, than it does to sell two copies for $50. Because the former nets you one cent more.

The system is still in its infancy, and there are issues with it, but some sort of pay-what-you-want system makes far more economic sense for products with infinite supply than do traditional models, and the sooner people embrace it and thus iron out the kinks, the better.

Ah, a false dilemma, the fall back position of any politician ;)
You are presuming that any other position would have gotten revenue from all the other downloads. This is one of the few things about this that we know to be false of course. Simply the act of accepting that it exists and not complaining has gained him those 170 sales. it has literally cost him NOTHING to gain 170 sales and you pretend he is the crazy one…

I think this is an area where Kickstarter could really work well. If you’ve created a game, you need a certain amount of money back before it’s worth your time to have made it, right? So put it on kickstarter *at that point*, when it’s done, but you haven’t released it at all. Have a demo for people to try so they can decide if they like it. Then, unless enough people kick in and pony up the cash, the game won’t be released, so there’ll be no way for anyone to pirate it. After the kickstarter, you can make it “pay what you want,” and maybe you’ll get some further cash from people who are big fans. But this setup makes the decision very explicit for people: if not enough people offer to pay, nobody will get to play the game. If you contribute to the campaign, that’s what you’re paying for. There’s some risk of people doing what came up in an earlier article, promising to contribute and then disappearing when the bill comes, because the successful completion of the campaign means the game will later be available more or less free–but fundamentally I think the idea may be pretty sound. Once people get over the mental block of paying for the game (and the risks associated with connecting someone with your financial information, no matter how tangentially), I think the actual amount they pay doesn’t matter much, up to around £5 / $8. Anything under that margin just gets mentally classified as “cheap” and forgotten.

I haven’t seen any games actually take this tactic yet–most are asking for the funds prior to development, which I think will probably cease to be viable once gamers realize that the back-of-box blurb (which is basically the level that pre-dev pitches reach) doesn’t guarantee much about the quality of the game–but I think it’s a sound principle, and I expect to see it soon.

I agree that crowdfunding is one possible solution to the problems piracy potentially presents to the traditional business model, but I’m not sure it makes sense to use it in the fashion you describe. To me, the essential problem is that making games (and other media) costs time and money, and that time and money is a sunk cost that may or may not be recouped in sales. Kickstarting a project to fund the development makes sense, because it effectively eliminates the risk of failing to recoup costs (assuming you budget appropriately). Any post-Kickstarter sales are effectively pure profit. (At least in the digital sphere.) Your proposed model would invest all the development costs, and then make any recoupment at all dependent on the Kickstarter funding. Why wouldn’t you just start selling the game? At least that way, even if you don’t meet your target, you at least get -something-.

That said, Greg Stolze and a few other writers and tabletop game designers have done pretty well with a “ransom” model of content release – ask for X money on Kickstarter, provide some easy and/or inexpensive perks for donation, and then if you meet your target publish the content for free download by everyone. We’re talking a few hundred or thousand dollars at a time, though, certainly not enough to be their primary income, and probably not enough to make more than the most basic, quick games financially viable.

I have no idea what you just said or if it makes any sense at all, but I’d rather see more Creative Commons/freely licensed KickStarters

There were a few trials, like for instance this “cartoon”: link to kickstarter.com , but frankly it looked kinda shit or a book called “13 Years in America” also on KickStarter.

What this would do is effectively fund the development time of whatever creative project is suggested and pay the wages and costs of the people working on it (maybe with a little money on the top to keep), but instead of selling it afterwards and trying to make a profit it doesn’t have any licensing bonds or is Creative Commons so that everyone everywhere can download/use/read/enjoy it legally for free etc.

There was actually a crowdfunding platform called unglue.it trying to free books from licensing restrictions and release them under Creative Commons so that they can be enjoyed by everyone for effectively free afterwards: link to unglue.it
Unfortunately they were also using Amazon to collect payments, and they didn’t look too kindly on the prospects of the site and freezed their service for them…

“Amazon Payments has informed us that they will no longer process pledge payments for Unglue.it, forcing us to suspend all active ungluing campaigns. According to a Senior Account Manager at Amazon, Amazon has decided against “boarding fresh crowdfunding accounts at this time”. Amazon has been providing payment services for Unglue.it, as it does for the popular crowdfunding site Kickstarter.”

A few of the F2P (and a few that are not, like the SP and MP Starship Corporation) are going this route for Kickstarter/Indiegogo and general Dev funding. It’s the way for a small team to go IMO, the way all media should think about it.

This way piracy is not an issue, you released the product, for the price, people got paid, food on tables. What, the share holders did not get £100 in cheques? If you have no share holders, your only worrying about putting food on your table, not who to fire to prop up the share and put food on other peoples table (at your expense!).

I live in Turkey where there is only one company importing video games. My friend, whom worked in that company (Aral Game) for quite some time and we love games with passion, and our hate for Aral is equal to our love for video games. They put stickers on the case which ruins the cover (don’t laugh, it’s a very serious issue :P ), they usually don’t bring the games in time unless it’s hyped (I had to wait 3 extra days for Battlefield Bad Comapany 2 but Battlefiel 3 was on the shelves 1 day early), and worst of all, they don’t give the promotional pack if you pre-purchase (you can buy it for extra money). Now, I’m willing to pay some extra bucks to get the special edition or whatever it is, but sometimes they don’t even bring the special edition (DAO, XCOM: Enemy Unknown) even though they said they would (At the moment I’m really conflicted whether I should buy XCOM or not). I really don’t want to buy from these jerks, I know the company lose money too, but I don’t want them to make money.

Since that’s out of my system, I can now move to availability.

When I was 5-ish, my father lost $100 on his bank account (that was a lot of money back then, at least for us) and he learned that someone, somehow acquired his credit card info and used that money to rent a domain on the internet. So he removed internet access to his card, and no matter how much I beg him, he does not open it. So there is no way for me to buy a video game that’s not imported.

I was a huge fan of Frictional Games before they even started working on Amnesia, and I really wanted to support them, but since I don’t have any credit card, I just had to pirate it. After a month, they sent me an e-mail saying that they accept payment from phones aswell. Even though I already finished the game, and had no intention of playing any further, I just reached my phone and called the number in an instant.

Back when Minecraft was on alpha, an Australian friend of mine said she bought some extra Minecraft codes and she just gave the last code to me. That was, without any question, the best present I ever gotten (topping the laptop my dad bought me 7 years ago). Even though the game was just 10 bucks, there is no way I could have bought it. And I was thrilled.

Now, the same story with Planetside 2. Not only I want the cool gifts in the Alpha Squad package, I really want this game to succeed, and I really want to support for everything they’ve ever done. €29 is a lot for f2p game but I just want to support these people. Only if I could…

Look for places that sell PaySafe Cards in Turkey: link to paysafecard.com , they launched there back in June and there probably will be some. You can buy a card with real money from any place and use the code to pay on services like Steam or similar.
You can also combine several cards (up to 10) if you don’t have enough money left on one, they usually comes in values like 25€, 50€, 100€ etc. around here.

Are you kidding me? Despite a cult following, massive seeds and promos on the homepages of Piratebay and Reddit, the game only has ***170 purchases**** — and the developer doesn’t think piracy is a problem?

Dude: piracy is your problem. This isn’t about you failing as a developer or your customers “rebelling” or oppressed people in Azerbaijan. It’s about humans’ infinite capacity to steal, mooch and freeload if not explicitly dissuaded from it — a principle that has been understood by convenience store clerks for many thousands of years.

“Since you can get McPixel for even one cent, this proves that many people have no means of accessing games,” say Sosowski. No. It proves that many people won’t pay one cent for your game, even if they like it and love, when they know they can steal it with no risk.

$170 is roughly £110.With a cheap game, probably 10% minimum is going to the payment provider so actually more like £100. If everything is legit, and through your indie dev company, subtract 20% corp tax is £80. Assume 365 days at that rate and you get £29,200.
More realistically, assume sales drop after 6 months to a quarter their current peak (this is being extremely generous) and you instead get
14600 + 3650 = £18,250 a year.
Compare that with UK software developer salary:link to payscale.com
of £28k median, which likely includes employer pension contributions etc.

This doesn’t include software purchase costs, accountancy costs, £15 a year to companies house, purchasing any required hardware, or electricity and heating costs for developing full time at home .

Nope, nobody is going to ‘kill’ for that income as a computer programmer.

cliffski, I both love and hate, agree and disagree with you. Your my Marmite! :D

That’s for a flash game. I’m not talking about GSB (which I bought, in the Humble Bundle PWYW and for a above average price) or GTB here. But for Mcpixel and how much it cost to develop, and how much it will make back off of that. If he get’s £18k is that good for him? This is practically a flash game, how long does it last? What were the development costs?

If it’s not profitable, then guess what? Some business ideas are not profitable. It might be music, movies, literature and software (game or not) is not a profitable buisness. It’s called a hobby or an art instead. It’s not a crime to make art in your own time and share it for free, but have to work some other job to pay the bills.

Of course, he’s actually averaging around $2.60 instead of the $1 per sale assumed there, so if we were to assume a steady rate of sales at that average price and number per day, we’d have to multiply your numbers by 2.6, which I suspect would be rather good.

If it were at all reasonable to assume figures stemming from a weekend sale would hold for an entire year, or even six months, which of course it is not.

But then again we’re assuming the game took a year of full time work to develop for that silly extrapolation to full time software developer salary to make sense, so the sales projection is the least of the bad assumptions.

Your continued lack of vision and thinking like an accountant is astounding, and probably one of the main reasons why I’ll likely not ever play any of your games :P
I was honestly even surprised that you agreed to be part of an Indie Bundle in the first place with your conservative outlook on things.

In the meantime he has gathered quite a following, there are people paying upwords of $100 for the game: link to mcpixel.net and he’s on his best way to take his game to Steam and other Digital Distribution platforms…

I believe that the people who view piracy as a net force for good, or perhaps even as neutral, are not so much malicious, as they are just incredibly naive about human nature.

It’s nice to focus on how torrenting makes culture available for those who would otherwise not have acess to it, but what people love to ignore is that for every “pirate” who is poor or lives in a neglected or oppressive country, there are 10 pirates who live in the first world and could easily afford the game, but merely choose not to pay a cent because they are selfish.

“If you treat people with respect, don’t use DRM, and set a reasonable price, people will pay.”

No. No, most of them won’t. That’s the whole problem. The pay-what-you-want, DRM-free indie bundles get pirated like you wouldn’t believe. The piracy estimates the indie devs put up aren’t that much different from the ones from the “lying”, “evil” Ubisoft, and the indies did everything “right”.

The developers and publishers aren’t the problem. The problem is that people don’t understand, or care about, the ramifications of their behavior. They view content creators as an endless gravy train that no amount of freeloading off of could possibly derail, so why pay?

And I find it incredibly sad that even “thoughtful” sites like RPS continue to ceaselessly champion excuses, distortions, and creator-blaming instead of educating people on the effects their behavior has on creative industries.

Of course, you have those that believe even education isn’t enough. That even when educated, people will continue to nihilistically look out for their own short term profit at the total expense of the long-term health of the creative industries that make their hobby possible. That’s why you see the whip and the stick with policies like DRM and SOPA.

And naturally, those are doomed to fail. DRM doesn’t work and alienates your actual paying customers. Acts like SOPA get shot down because in democracies, the people will succesfully thwart them. That’s why the future of gaming may very well be microtransactions, always-on, and FTP and even PTW.

But people do pay. They’re paying right now. As we speak. Millions and millions of them. They don’t have to. The torrent of whatever it is they want is out there right now waiting for them. But they do anyway. The indie bundles have been roaring successes. Games still sell in the millions. Movies do enormous box office and then millions and millions of dollars in the home market. Books do gangbusters. All of these things can be trivially pirated, and are in quantity, but guess what, they still turn a profit.

Right now it seems that there remain enough legitimate customers to keep things viable. I’m just concerned it might be trending away from that, so we should do what we can to encourage people to give back.

I’m not convinced that they are trending in any particular direction – piracy has been this accessible for over a decade and was plenty prevalent before that, and the sky has not fallen. But I absolutely agree that people should put their money behind the things they enjoy, and the more that they can be encouraged, in a positive way, to do so, the better.

Also, FWIW, I’m trying to avoid even getting into the argument about whether piracy hurts or helps, is wrong or right, etc. There’s simply no reliable data to support arguments on that basis, and I can’t help but feel they are fundamentally irrelevant when the situation is that piracy exists, it is widespread and easily accessible, and neither locking down the content nor attacking the distribution channels is doing much to change that situation. (Though, if I were to pick an approach, I would certainly vote for going after the venues of distribution and the cracking groups, as those efforts, while not particularly fruitful, at least don’t harm paying customers.) And I think it makes more sense to look at how to maximize the chances of people actually making that choice to purchase your product, or if you can’t manage that, look at other models that sidestep the issue, than to continue tilting at windmills to the possible harm of your customer base.

You might want to look at and/or read this, it’s even largely comprised of “industry numbers”: link to techdirt.com
No single industry is in trouble because of any changes that have happened in the digital age, both the number of works have increased tremendously (Steam Greenlight for instance could likely tell you a story about that in regards to games…) and the profits of ALL entertainment industries have done nothing but shot up consistently throughout, yet they haven’t done anything else but whine and ask for more “protection” in regards to their profits for all this time.

Also resist new technology and the new possibilities it affords as violently as possible. See, for example, the way many publishers have attempted to sabotage the e-book market or simply refused to participate in it despite it clearly being very popular among consumers. Or JK Rowling’s ridiculous stance on Harry Potter ebooks (she didn’t want to do them because she was afraid they’d be pirated, and finally consented…but only through her own personal site, with severe restrictions on user rights. Nevermind that pirate copies of all seven books have been everywhere on the internet for years before she ever put legitimate copies up.)

You should apply to the MPAA/RIAA or similar organization in your country, you’d fit right in :P

The SOPA/ACTA development is a rather new thing by the way and largely tied with the “Pirate Party” movement, over the past 30 years these “creative industries” have been rather busy making illegal what wasn’t and generally hindering technological innovation any way they could so they could uphold their monopolistic business models. This is for the US alone: link to techdirt.com

1.1982: Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendments Act: Increased criminal penalties for infringing records, tapes and films from $25k & 2 years in jail to $250,000 and 5 years in jail. Also… made it so that first-time offenders could get the maximum.

2.1984: Record Rental Amendment of 1984: Outlawed music rentals (have you ever wondered why there were no Blockbusters or Netflixes for music?)

6.1994: Uruguay Round Agreements Act: Not only did it seize works out of the public domain and put them under copyright (this was what was challenged in the recent Golan case), but it made it a criminal offense to bootleg concerts (audio or video).

7.1995: The Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act: Created a new “performance” right for copyright holders concerning digital “performances.”

8.1996: Anticounterfeiting Consumer Protection Act of 1996: Expanded racketeering laws to include criminal copyright infringement, as well as “trafficking” in computer software, documentation or packaging, as well as trafficking in movies or audiovisual works. Also let the government seize property associated with these activities (precursor to domain seizures…).

9.1997: No Electronic Theft (NET) Act: Decreased the threshold for what counts as criminal infringement (such as taking out the monetary profit requirement).

10.1998: Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act: You should know this one. Expanded copyright terms by 20 years.

11.1998: Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA): Again, you may have heard of it. Created anti-circumvention rules and the notice-and-takedown system for online infringement, among many other things.

13.2004: Intellectual Property Protection and Courts Amendments Act: Set up penalties (civil and criminal) for counterfeit labels, documentation and packaging in association with copyrighted goods (yes, separate from the content itself). Also lowered the bar to show willful infringement.

14.2005: Family Entertainment and Copyright Act: Criminalizes recording of movies in theaters and also lets theaters detain people merely suspected of recording in theaters. Criminalizes releasing a work online before it’s been officially released (if it’s “being prepared” for commercial distribution).

15.2008: Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act: Increased civil penalties for infringement. Increased government seizure & forfeiture powers (which is how the government currently justifies its questionable domain seizures) and created a job in the White House to focus on greater enforcement.

They have also constantly increased the duration of Copyright over the past 100+ years to an obscene amount and will likely try to continue doing so: link to techliberation.com

There will never be *enough* protection for them when it comes to maximizing profits and if they could they’d take every single consumer right you have away in a heartbeat, and the ironic thing about it is that with every new law they lobby for and pass there is an “increased rate of piracy” since they’ve managed to make even more things to be considered as infringing.

That’s an impressive post but I have to inform you that you’re kind of preaching to the choir. I’m not a copyright maximalist, and just because I view many pirates with scorn, doesn’t mean I think the MPAA / RIAA have behaved like any kind of saints, either.

Like most things, it’s not black and white. There are wrongdoers on both sides of this.

Ha, I uploaded my game Cryptozookeeper to The Pirate Bay last year. TPB is visited by millions of people, there’s nobody locking developers out from uploading torrents and it places a bit of the bandwidth load in downloading games elsewhere. I’ve had nothing but a positive experience since I played the link there.

I purchased the game, but I haven’t received an email containing a download link. That was over an hour ago… I emailed him, and until I get the link, I’ll be playing the torrent. Thought the server might be overloaded from the exposure, but hmmm…

I received an email within minutes of going through paypal. Did you get bounced back to the mcpixel domain to a page saying to expect an email? Mine looked like this.
——————–
Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2012 23:07:17 +0200
From: Sos Sosowski [email removed]
To: [email removed]
Subject: McPixel!
X-Mailer: PHPMailer 5.1 (phpmailer.sourceforge.net)

Hi!

Thanks a lot for purchasing McPixel!
I am really excited about this and I really hope you like it!

From a lifetime overall perspective, from an 8 year old when the C=64 arrived in our house in 1982 until now, I’ve pirated when it was way more convenient than purchasing.

Digital distribution has really hugely raised the convenience of buying to the point that it’s hard to imagine bothering to pirate. It’s only DRM that keeps it sometimes attractive, though at this point in my life I just “go without” rather than pirate.

It is awesome to finally see someone (who is a developer) take this stance. As he clearly states, this is incredibly hard, but it is also the only rational thing to do besides finding a different job…
From my own behaviour I extrapolate that there is still a lot of money in gaming to be made, even in the age of piracy. I used to pirate pretty much everything, while I haven’t pirated anything now in years. That is not due to steam’s DRM, but the flood of sales and increased value (to me) of digital distribution channels.
In the end I’d rather pay and I assume many others, so that I can show my appreciation. But my morals (especially when I was younger) would not stop me from getting an expensive game for free. Is it wrong? At least a little. Can you do anything about it? Not really. So do as this man suggests, roll with the punch and accept the new market.